From a Cause to a Style: Modernist Architecture's Encounter with the American City

by Nathan Glazer

Modernism in architecture and urban design has failed the American city. This is the decisive conclusion that renowned public intellectual Nathan Glazer has drawn from two decades of writing and thinking about what this architectural movement will bequeath to future generations. In From a Cause to a Style , he proclaims his disappointment with modernism and its impact on the American city.


Writing in the tradition of legendary American architectural critics Lewis Mumford and Jane Jacobs, Glazer contends that modernism, this new urban form that signaled not just a radical revolution in style but a social ambition to enhance the conditions under which ordinary people lived, has fallen short on all counts. The articles and essays collected here--some never published before, all updated--reflect his ideas on subjects ranging from the livable city and public housing to building design, public memorials, and the uses of public space. Glazer, an undisputed giant among public intellectuals, is perhaps best known for his writings on ethnicity and social policy, where the unflinching honesty and independence of thought that he brought to bear on tough social questions has earned him respect from both the Left and the Right. Here, he challenges us to face some difficult truths about the public places that, for better or worse, define who we are as a society.



From a Cause to a Style is an exhilarating and thought-provoking book that raises important questions about modernist architecture and the larger social aims it was supposed to have addressed-and those it has abandoned.

Genres: Architecture

320 pages, Hardcover

First published February 20, 2007

About the author

Nathan Glazer was an American sociologist who taught at the University of California, Berkeley, and for several decades at Harvard University.

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorites of all time. The chapter on monuments in particular was really extraordinary. How can you make a tangible visible symbol to impress the public with some idea, when all the symbolic lexicons have been let out to pasture? You get the Vietnam War Memorial, where the absence of accepted visual ideas in architecture perfectly suits the absence of accepted ideas guiding the war. The medium really is the message.

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm sympathetic to the sentiment of this book --- that modernist architecture's claims to represent the common man's aesthetic went terribly awry --- this book disappointed my hopes that it would be the all-in-one smackdown of modernism. It suffers from being an combination of new material and adaptations of essays taken from multiple sources, so we get a first part that pretty much says all he wants to say and then feels padded by a bunch of talk of specifics limited to public housing in New York City. I was hoping for something deeper and more universal.

[Wayne · Rating 5 out of 5]

How did modern architecture migrate from a social movement hellbent to improve cities worldwide to Dwell magazine? Glazer traces this path with great writing and plenty of expertise - although he may blame housing projects a bit overly much for the decline in the popularity of modernism. This book is a rarity among architectural history tomes: both provocative and enjoyable to read.

[Timothy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing--repetitive and shallow, with occasional glimmers of what might have been.